SpacePope

Jib: I believe my nerve is tier 3, I did just enough incarnate stuff to get that and then paused to wait for 20.5

As far as Silver Mantis, it is my personal belief that she is one of the toughest Arachnos AVs you'll run into outside of TFs and the like. She has Thorntrops, the build up, and a crashless elude she can pop quite quickly. So you picked a high bar for your first hurdle.



Adeon: Fully agreed. I've got a demons/therm at 24 myself and I think that's where they're staying until 20.5 hit. I cannot wait. I love buff characters, but single buffing is madness.

As far as I know, there's unfortunately no good way to get DDR unless you're a set that has it naturally. It is frustrating, I agree.

Yeah, I think I'm probably going to try Ninjas.

All right. With the upcoming buff changes, I want to go back to Force Fields. I love the set but I just got tired of individual buffs. So I'm looking for thoughts and opinions on which set I shoudl pick as a primary. I'm not looking for ultimate min/max, just something interesting.

Robots and Demons are the only two I'm not considering. Bots because I love them and have a bunch of them already. Demons are cool, but their size and noise get to me.


So the options are:

Thugs: Good all-around set, built-in brute and leadership. Should be easy to softcap them.

Mercs: A weaker set, but fun thematically if not mechanically. Harder to softcap but bubbles would still help them a lot. Probably not going to go with them unless there's some sort of sudden revelation.

Ninjas: A fun set, defense helps them a ton. Oni is ugly, though.

Necromancy: The set I know the least about. I have never played a necro MM, so I can't attest to what's good or bad for them.


At any rate, I'd like to hear opinions and thoughts on this one, if anyone has them. There's no wrong answer, I'm just trying to decide.

Nope, this is currently broken and annoying.

Honestly, it looks like a very solid build for personal defense. Impressive, even. Not much is gonna take you down. What I'd ask is, what's your goal for this much survival? Are you going to run +4x8? Are you going to eat alphas in incarnate trial? I certainly don't think it's a bad build by any means, but I'm honestly curious what you want to do with it.

The one thing I would point out is that in slotting those full Blood Mandate sets, you lose a few things. Specifically, the pet uniques that give 5% defense and 10% resistances to your pets, plus the potency of the heals and shield of the protectors. I imagine this isn't a big issue if you're Tankerminding, but I like having my pets as sturdy as possible.

Depends on what you want to do. I would personally say Traps is the best all-around, but it's certainly not the end-all be-all.

FF is getting a major buff in the next big patch, you'll be able to hit all your bots with one cast. This is going to make me revisit my own personal Bots/FF. As far as incarnate content, bubbles are still nice but not the gamechangers they are in lower levels. Again, the buff to make them TAoE will make them much more useful in leagues.

Pain is good if you want to be a healer. I personally don't like it too much on MMs, because of pet fragility I prefer to prevent damage instead of healing it. That said, if you like a good mix of heals, buffs, and debuffs it's not bad by any means.

I'm working on a thugs/storm right now, haven't decided what I think of it yet. It has a lot of knockback, which makes me wary, but also a lot of nice buff and debuff.

Of what you listed, I would personally go bots/traps or bots/FF, depending on how active you want to be. No set will do you wrong, though.

Edit: Incidentally, I agree that the Oni is kind of disappointing, though for me it's more based on concept. I wanted a kickbutt ninja master to cap out my ninjas, not a fire demon.

In my opinion, Robots or Demons. Bots defense shield each other and have heals. Demons are much the same, but with resistance.

Just about any primary is good for soloing, really. Some are stronger than others, but they'll all get the job done for a basic solo character. The only set I wouldn't recommend is Mercenaries, because they have a lot of issues. If that is what you choose, however, you won't find the game unplayable.

Secondary-wise, there's even more variety. Poison and Pain are often looked on as black sheep, but again anything can get the job done. Traps is probably the all-around strongest, and Force Fields can stack a ton of defense as previously mentioned.

You'll get all sorts of opinions, though. Probably some which directly contradict mine. I say just pick something that sounds fun and try it out.

Hooray conspiracy theories.

Guess we'll just have to see what, if any, the endurance cost is.

Area of effect shield powers! Woo!

Everything else! Woo!

Supremacy, the bonus pets get for being near their master, is only 10% tohit and 25% damage. While these things aren't bad at all, they unfortunately don't help with survival.

Ouch, that's a pretty heavy-handed nerf.

Yeah, I'm skeptical as well, but hopefully after the patch things will shape up.

While I feel there might be some overhyping in this OP, in general I have to agree. I have a fair number of MMs, and it feels like with every new issue, their problems are just adding up. While fixing the ranged AI wouldn't help Ninjas, unfortunately, I'd love to see my mercs and bots stop running into melee and getting splatted into their component parts.

Then there's the aforementioned level difference in incarnate stuff. While I understand it's necessary, it does put a pretty hefty penalty on MMs. The basic minions are summoned at -2. I don't know if the "purple patch" numbers apply to pets, but I assume they do. So if the Mastermind has one level shift, the 3 pets are hitting for a whopping 30% of their damage. If the MM hasn't gotten a shift yet, it's 15%. Sure, the level difference affects everyone. Can't deny that. But it hits 5/6 of an MM's pets even harder than everyone else, even before one considers how squishy they are.

Next of course there's the loot issues, but I take their word that the system is being lookg at. So I won't go into that again.

Yep. Here's hoping for quick and useful changes. I don't expect a very rare every time, but it would be nice to at least get the occasional rare.